[WIP] - Unnamed World, need feedback

[_witchborn]

Hello to all!! This is the first map I've ever posted, and probably the third map I've ever gotten so far along with.

It's the world of my new story (still in development really, I only have names for a few places & during the process of the map new places cropped up and old places got erased.) and I would really appreciate any feedback and critique and any helpful where-to-go-from-here's.




I was messing around with mountains last night and I couldn't figure out the right brush size ratio for the map. Like, I like placing them zoomed in about 50%-200% but when zoomed out everything looks so small and indistinct, yet too big and it seems too cartoony. I ended up just deleting the layer because I was getting so frustrated, lol.

What kind of mountains do you prefer? I'm limited to gimp as software, but I do have ArtRage Lite that came with my intuos tablet, but I really haven't gotten too far into it. I'm thinking about installing Inkscape for labeling purposes but I'm not sure if it's worth the ram space. Any advice on that?

Sorry for rambling, but any help is very appreciated.

[Domino44]

What you have so far looks nice, one thing I saw was that around the shoreline seems pixilated and grungy I would suggest cleaning that up. I think the first thing you need to do is decide on a scale, this map looks like it could either be small islands or it could be as big as a whole world map. Depending on how big you want this to be it would change how you should approach adding other details to this map. I also think that you should look at differing styles and try to draw inspiration from those certain styles.

[_witchborn]

Hi Domino, thanks for such a quick reply!!
The pixelation kills me, but I haven't figured out a way to clean it up. I've tried using a guassian blur but it doesn't seem to come out the way I want it to.

Scale wise I was thinking "world view" yet there are other places that I've decided not to show on the map. Agyos for example, the continent against the right edge of the map extends farther on, as well as the one in the north. I think of it as an in-world map where only the "known worlds" are shown.

If were to go world scale how would you suggest adding the other elements?

And thank you for your advice, I agree, the more maps I look at the more inspired I am to complete mine. Not only that but there are so many beautiful maps on this site, it's easy to just lose yourself in all their little details.

[_witchborn]

Oh I have another question, how would you go about creating legends and/or keys for a map? I've searched the site many a times and really haven't found anything on that subject.